Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates to content provisioning, distribution, transmission, and delivery and, to a device, system and method to dynamically manage bandwidth for audiovisual and data communications.
Description of the Background
In a distribution network, numerous discrete, preassigned groups of users, typically referred to as population pools, may be served or have access to content. Each user may receive content that is received by all users, by users of multiple population pools, and may additionally receive, or have available for request, unique content available for use by that user, by a subset of users, or by one or certain population pools, at any given time.
Broadcast content, as would be understood to those skilled in the pertinent arts, is content that may be constantly transmitted or otherwise made available to many or all users.
Narrowcast content, such as content delivered via switched digital video (SDV) and video on demand (VOD) technologies, enables content and network providers to offer a wider variety of content and programming. In a SDV system, for example, unwatched or rarely watched content may be transmitted only into the population pool or pools, and/or only to the users, and/or only at the times, that the content is requested.